Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Wednesday 09 March 2005 11:31 am, Greg London wrote:
> drew Roberts said:
> > On Wednesday 09 March 2005 08:22 am, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> >> Another case where the NC license is stupid and short-sighted.
> >> Strangely, after 2 years of confused questions like this, the
> >> creativecommons.org site still burbles about NC like it's the cure for
> >> cancer.
> >
> > Would it perhaps be useful to search for some other form of NC that
> > somehow prevents direct compensation without being so strict with respect
> > to indirect money?
>
> The point of an author licensing a work under CC-NC is
> to get free advertising, free samples, free fans, and free hype.
> Give away enough of the rights that fans can distribute the work,
> modify the work, but keep the rights to make money off the work.
>
> Evan will love this part: NonCommercial is a market-economy license.
>
> That is the whole point. It is a license crafted in the best interest
> of the original author. The idea being to give away some of the rights
> to leverage a fan base to increase your readers, listeners, and viewers.
> But in the end, it is a license for benefit of the original author.

I know what it does, I just think it probably goes overboard for the wishes 
of 
some authors and a middle ground may be appreciated by some.

For instance, you release a poem CC BY-NC, I set it to music and record it 
and 
release it CC BY-NC. So far , so good.

A radio station funded out of the owners pocket that acceptd no advertising 
or 
other sources of money plays such CC BY-NC songs because the station owner 
wants to promote CC and is rich and has always wanted to run an eclectic 
station in his town. And here is where it may go too far for some, a 
restaurant cannot tune into that station and let the patrons listen to that 
music.
>
> If you create a derivative of a CC-NC work, you should know up front
> that you can never make money off of the work. And out-sourcing the
> money-making to a third party is a shell game. The author choose
> CC-NC because they wanted exclusive right to make money on the work.
> Direct or indirect doesn't matter.
>
> In fact, I think one of the CreativeCommons cartoons specifically
> describes the scenario where Alice licenses her work CC-NC,
> fans copy/distrubute/derive the work non-commercially.
> Some one stumbles across it and wants to use it commercially
> and so they contact Alice and pay her for the right to use
> the work commercially. And they all live happily ever after.

In the example above, they could not contact you to arrange for that right. 
They would have to contact me as well. But, in fact, would the compulsary 
licenses trump our wishes?
>
> That is the point of CC-NC. Some author doesn't have the
> advertising, sales, and distribution channel of the big guys,
> so they leverage some of their rights in hope of getting noticed.
> WIth the point being that if they do get noticed, they get paid.

They are free to try this, but as a fan, I doubt I will be giving them my 
attention with the license working in the way it does. I may if there was a 
middle ground license.
>
> If you took someone's CC-NC work, created a derivative,
> and now it's been offered space at a commercial venue,
> but you don't make any money, then it's still a commercial
> venue. You might try contacting the original author and
> seeing if you can get permission to display the work at
> this one show. Maybe they'll give permission on the idea
> that they have a greater chanced of getting noticed.

I am not misisng the point. I am not suggesting that CC-NC be changed. I am 
suggesting we consider a possible additional license that will find a middle 
ground for certain situations.

Have I been a little clearer?

all the best,

drew